Linus Torvalds - a classic example of the love-it-or-hate-it type of person. Brilliant programmer, of course, and the father of one of the most extraordinary software projects in the world, but sometimes, he can be utterly arrogant any annoying, yet the other moment completely sensible and utterly spot-on in his statements. CBR listed the ten best Linus Torvalds quotes.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2008-06-07
Can you be more specific what you don't like in the Linux kernel? I think you're wrong, I think Linus is a great architect, but the kernel is quite old large general low-level piece of software, and that means it can be a lot complicated. I think you're confusing ugliness from complexity and ugliness from bad design.
Member since:2006-02-15
I just took offense to the original article calling him a "Brilliant Programmer"
Well, it is an opinion and you are of course entitled to have your opinion, but IMHO he is still a brilliant programmer. He did after all start a kernel that changed the OSS scene forever, he did write Git which is now used all over the net for source code management and so forth..
I work on "his" kernel every day and it really is the biggest POS on the planet!
Explain, what exactly is wrong with Linux kernel? Just spouting "it's POS" won't make anyone listen to you.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2007-08-29
There are a lot of neat free software projects. If your pet project has a leader who produces amusing quotes, you should make a list of them and submit it.
This is a way of saying that you are dramatically off-topic. Would you like the artible to be changed to read "...father of one of the most extraordinary software projects in the world. BSD ports are another extraordinary project. But sometimes, he..." ? Does that not sound just the slightest bit incredibly stupid to you?
If you feel that linux is not a remarkable project, then I'm sure we would all be fascinated to see you present evidence to that effect. If you feel that there are projects which are more remarkable - you might notice that the article didn't say there aren't - then I'm sure everybody would like to read a quantitative analysis of which open source projects are the most incredible.
And seeing that Linus was the right man in the right place, and made the right decisions to enable free software to really take off, during a time period when BSD was bogged down for years with licensing issues, I know that I would be very interested to learn why he is not, in fact, a big hero.